Michael Foot | British politician | Britannica.com British politician Alternative Title: Michael Mackintosh Foot Michael Foot Sidney Webb Michael Foot, in full Michael Mackintosh Foot (born July 23, 1913, Plymouth , Devon , Eng.—died March 3, 2010, Hampstead, London), leader of Britain’s Labour Party from November 1980 to October 1983 and an intellectual left-wing socialist. Foot was a member of a strongly Liberal family (his father had been a member of Parliament). He attended Wadham College, Oxford, and then began a career as a newspaper editor and columnist (1937–74). The mass unemployment of the 1930s turned him to socialism , and from 1945 to 1992, apart from a break between 1955 and 1960, he was a Labour member of Parliament.

In 1974 he established himself as a leading member of Prime Minister Harold Wilson ’s cabinet, first as secretary of state for employment (1974–76) in charge of complex and controversial trade-union legislation and then (1976–79) as leader of the House of Commons , a role that required him to hold the parliamentary party together. From deputy leader of the Labour Party (1976–80), he rose to become the party’s chief, defeating Denis Healey , the candidate of Labour’s right wing, in November 1980 by a vote of 139 to 129. This vote, as well as other leftward trends in the party, caused some right-wing Labourites to resign from the party and four months later to found the Social Democratic Party . Following a disastrous showing in the June 1983 general election, Foot announced that he would not continue as party leader. Neil G. Kinnock succeeded him in October 1983. Foot had acquired a reputation as a rebel of the left. For many years he was a pamphleteer and political writer, fervently espousing the cause of nuclear disarmament.

He was a strong ally of the British trade unions and an advocate of sharply increased public expenditures and state ownership of industries. He wrote a number of books, including Aneurin Bevan, a Biography, 2 vol. (1962–73). Learn More in these related articles: Michael Foot Facts LINK / CITE ADD TO WORD LIST Michael Foot Facts Michael Foot Quotes Michael Foot (born 1913) was a left-wing journalist, a British Labour Party member of Parliament, and leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983. Michael Foot was born on July 23, 1913, in Plymouth, England. His father, Isaac Foot (1880-1960), was a major figure in the radical wing of the Liberal Party and represented Bodmin (Cornwall) in Parliament from 1922 to 1924 and again from 1929 to 1935. A passionate bibliophile, he built up a collection of more than 60,000 books—an enthusiasm which his son inherited. Foot was a physically active child despite recurring bouts of eczema and asthma.

He attended Leighton Park, a public school founded by Quakers and marked by an internationalist and pacifist ethos. In 1931 he entered Oxford and soon gravitated toward the debating society or Union, as it was called, becoming its president in 1933. He voted with the majority in the famous 1933 resolution that "this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country." Liberal Turns Labour Foot's first venture into national journalism was a 1934 article for the News Chronicle of London entitled "Why I Am a Liberal." He argued that Liberalism was a bulwark against war and fascism and called for a Rooseveltian New Deal for Britain. But he was not destined to remain a Liberal much longer. In 1934 he took a job in Liverpool, where he was appalled by the poverty and unemployment he saw around him. As a result he joined the Labour Party and met, for the first time, Aneurin Bevan, whose close friend, coworker, and biographer he was later to become. Foot fought his first parliamentary race in 1935, losing to a popular Conservative candidate at Monmouth.

In 1937 he was adopted as the prospective Labour candidate for Plymouth Devenport. More immediately promising was the experience he was gaining in journalism. After short stints with the New Statesman and Tribune, Bevan was instrumental in finding him a job on the newspapers owned by Lord Beaverbrook. He worked for Beaverbrook from 1938 to 1944, rising to the acting editorship of the London Evening Standard in 1942. Under his guidance the paper moved sharply to the left. The appearance of the book Guilty Men in 1940 made him notorious. Co-written by him under the pseudonym "Cato," Guilty Men was a slashing attack on the foreign and defense policies of the Conservative governments of the 1930s. A massive best-seller (by 1944 there were 43 printings), it became the leading anti-Tory critique of appeasement and stands as one of the great political tracts of 20th-century Britain and as a contributing factor to the Labour Party's victory in 1945.

Victory Over Tories Foot won Plymouth Devenport in 1945, transforming a previous Tory majority of 11,000 into a Labour majority of 2,000. A back beach "loyal critic" of the government, he was the co-author of the 1947 pamphlet "Keep Left," which warned of the need for more rigorous socialist policies. In 1948 he became editor of Tribune and steered the editorial line toward support of Britain's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and support for the United States in the Korean War. During the 1950s Foot was a leading spokesperson for the left wing of the Labour Party. He attacked the 1951 Labour government's budget, which raised defense spending and imposed fees on drug prescriptions and eyeglasses. He opposed German rearmament, the British invasion of Suez in 1956, and the Labour leadership's defense policy, which conditionally tolerated British first use of nuclear weapons. These controversial stands helped cause his defeat in the elections of 1955 and 1959.

Foot was flabbergasted when in 1957 his political hero Aneurin Bevan abruptly announced that Britain must maintain its nuclear deterrent so as not to "appear naked in the conference chamber" in negotiations with the Soviet Union. However, friendly relations between the two men were re-established by 1959. On Bevan's death in 1960 Foot was selected as his successor for the South Wales coalmining constituency of Ebbw Vale. He won election by over 16,000 votes and still held the seat in 1985. Foot welcomed the emergence of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour Party in 1963 and gave critical support to the 1964-1970 Labour government from the back benches. As he saw it, the greatest need was to keep the Tories out, even though he viewed the government's record as a "bloody catastrophe." In 1969 he ran unsuccessfully against James Callaghan for the post of Labour Party treasurer. Becomes Employment Secretary In 1970 Foot substantially modified his political stance. Previously a back bench critic of the Labour leadership, he now sought and won election to the shadow cabinet.

In 1972 Wilson promoted him to shadow leader of the House of Commons, and after Labour's victory in the 1974 general election he accepted the cabinet post of employment secretary. Foot was a powerful figure in the 1974-1979 Labour government. As employment secretary he was responsible for the repeal of the Conservative Industrial Relations Act of 1972. As leader of the House of Commons from 1976 to 1979 he used his encyclopedic knowledge of parliamentary procedure to guide legislation through a House of Commons in which the government did not command a majority. His goal throughout was to keep Labour in office for as long as possible, and he accordingly advised Callaghan, to whom he had become increasingly close, not to hold a general election in the fall of 1978. But not even Foot's parliamentary skills could save the government from losing a vote of confidence in March 1979, and in the ensuing election Labour suffered a stunning defeat. Following Callaghan's resignation as party leader, Foot won a bitterly-fought contest against Denis Healy in November 1980.

Foot's election, along with sweeping constitutional changes in the party's method of electing the leader and reselecting members of Parliament, led the far right of the party to split from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party (S.D.P.) early in 1981. Defeat for Labour Foot led a deeply divided and demoralized party into the general election of 1983. The result was an utter debacle for Labour, which only narrowly edged out the S.D.P. for second place with 27.6 percent of the votes. It was Labour's worst showing since the 1920s. On June 13, 1983, Foot resigned as party leader. Ten years later, looking back over Foot's career on the occasion of his 80th birthday in July 1993, journalist Ian Aitken, writing in New Statesman & Society, lamented what he called a betrayal of Foot. "His leadership had been held—often by people who ought to know better—to be the cause of the disasters that engulfed the Labour Party in the early years of Thatcherism, culminating in the election loss of 1983.

Yet this is nonsense, and cruel nonsense at that. What doomed Foot's leadership … was, quite simply, betrayal—and betrayal by the very people he could have expected to support him as the most left-wing, democratically minded leader they have ever had, or were ever likely to have." Soviet Ties Alleged Foot was attacked in an early 1995 Sunday Times article that claimed he had taken money from the Soviet secret police in the 1960s to subsidize a weekly newspaper he helped to found in 1937. The story also appeared in The News of the World. Both papers were owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The stories caused a turmoil on London's Fleet Street, and Foot sued Murdoch and the papers for libel. The News printed an apology, but the Times edited Foot's response to the story. Not surprisingly, Foot had strong feelings about Murdoch, which he revealed during an interview with Bill Jones, writing for New Statesman.

"It is impossible to overrate the injurious effect he's (Murdoch) had, and it's sad the other papers are inclined to follow his lead rather than restore any decent standards in British journalism, though I exclude some from this—the Guardian and Observer and some sincere journalists on other papers." In the same interview, Foot blamed England's Tory government for corruption he sees as pervasive in English government. "Most people outside the House (of Commons) now see it as a corrupt place and they're right—it is corrupt from top to bottom. I exonerate Labour from these charges. Yet the way money is distributed in the Commons, and the (House of) Lords too, let's not forget, is an absolute outrage." As reported by the journalism of the day, Foot was viewed as largely ineffectual in his later years. Reviewer Steven Fielding, writing in the January 1996 issue of History Today on a biography of Foot by Mervyn Jones, noted the "very low-ebb" of Foot's reputation. "Few, even in the party he led during the early 1980s, would now publicly endorse any of his core beliefs.

Foot is as Old Labor as you could possibly get." Further Reading on Michael Foot Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (London, 1981), is accurate and on the whole sympathetic. A bruising account of his role in Labour's 1983 defeat is offered in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London, 1984). The best approach, however, is through Foot's own writings. In addition to Guilty Men (London, 1940), the most important are The Pen and the Sword (London, 1957), Aneurin Bevan, 1897-1945 (London, 1962), Aneurin Bevan, 1945-1960 (London, 1973), and Debts of Honour (London, 1981). His side of the election of 1983 is presented in Another Heart and Other Pulses: the Alternative to the Thatcher Society (London, 1984).

Jones, Bill, "Interview: Michael Foot," New Statesman, January 10, 1997, v126, n4316, p. 30. Aitken, Ian, "The Left's Betrayal of Michael Foot," New Statesman & Society, July 30, 1993, v6, n263, p. 9. BBC News - In pictures: Michael Foot In pictures: Michael Foot Copyright © 2016 BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so. It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country—and especially the rights of trade ...

Died: March 3, 2010 (aged 96) Nationality: English Occupation: Politician Bio: Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician and man of letters. He was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later became the Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983. Michael Foot, former Labour leader, dies aged 96 - Telegraph Labour Michael Foot, former Labour leader, dies aged 96 Michael Foot, the former leader of the Labour party, has died aged 96 at his home in north London. By Andrew Porter , Political Editor 8:19PM GMT 03 Mar 2010 Follow Baroness Thatcher, who faced Mr Foot in many fiery clashes across the despatch box in the House of Commons, said she was "very sorry to hear the news" of his death.

In a statement released by her office, Lady Thatcher said: "He was a great parliamentarian and a man of high principles." Gordon Brown described Mr Foot as "a man of deep principle and passionate idealism and one of the most eloquent speakers Britain has ever heard." His death was announced to the House of Commons by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who told MPs the news would be received "with great sadness not only in my own party but across the country as a whole". Mr Foot died shortly before 7am on Wednesday morning at his home in Hampstead, sources said. He had been ill for some time with fading health and had been receiving 24-hour care. Related Articles Tony Benn writes on the death of Michael Foot 03 Mar 2010 He led the Labour party through one of its bitterest and most unsuccessful periods from 1980 until he was defeated comprehensively in the 1983 general election. Mr Foot was elected to the Commons in 1945 having first stood as a Labour candidate in 1935. In 1980, he beat off a challenge from Denis Healey to win the party leadership, but the party remained committed to a left-wing agenda.

The 1983 general election manifesto, described by Gerald Kaufman as "the longest suicide note in history", included a commitment to nuclear disarmament and a host of other policies that were a gift to a rampant Conservative party under Mrs Thatcher who had also just won the Falklands War. Mr Foot agreed with the decision to send the task force to the South Atlantic despite opposition from some of his own MPs. Mr Foot was born in Plymouth in 1913 and first became MP for Plymouth Devonport in 1945, before becoming MP for Ebbw Vale and Blaenau Gwent. He was Employment Secretary in the 1974-76 Labour government under Harold Wilson and went on to become Leader of the Commons between 1976 and the 1979 general election. Mr Foot was famously derided for wearing what was characterised as a donkey jacket at a Cenotaph remembrance ceremony, although he always insisted he had sported a smart car coat. Although his appearance was often mocked, his oratory inside and outside the Commons was famed.

He was succeeded as Labour leader by his prodigy and fellow Welshman Neil Kinnock, who took on the hard left and sowed the seeds of New labour. Mr Foot was married to Jill Craigie, the author and feminist historian, who died in 1999. He remained an enthusiastic supporter of Plymouth Argyle. BBC News - The Michael Foot story The Michael Foot story Foot was an MP for 42 years Michael Foot was one of the great political orators, for more than half his life a political rebel and a thorn in the flesh of the establishment. But he became a loyal and determined cabinet minister and, finally, Labour leader, although he took his party to its worst electoral defeat in 50 years. Michael Mackintosh Foot was born in Plymouth on 23 July 1913, into a family of Liberal non-conformists. His solicitor father, Isaac, was twice elected as a Liberal MP for the former Bodmin Constituency in Cornwall and also served as Lord Mayor of Plymouth. The family was steeped in politics.

Michael's brother, Dingle Foot became Solicitor General in Harold Wilson's administration, another brother, John became a Liberal peer while a third brother, Hugh, became UK ambassador to the United Nations. Michael attended Leighton Park School, a Quaker establishment in Reading, before going up to Wadham College, Oxford, where he became President of the Oxford Union and converted to socialism. After his graduation he worked as a shipping clerk in Liverpool where he was shocked by the levels of poverty in the city and social conditions which were a far cry from those he had experienced in Plymouth. Foot joined the Labour Party and fought his first parliamentary election in 1935 when he stood for the Welsh seat of Monmouth. His political beliefs were already well established and he roundly criticised the Conservative Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, for his policy of rearmament. The young Michael Foot He became a journalist, working first for the New Statesman and then for the magazine Tribune before the press baron, Lord Beaverbrook, offered him a job on the London Evening Standard. Turned down by the military because of his chronic asthma, Foot was appointed editor of the Standard in 1942 at the age of 28.

He remained there until 1945 when he moved to the Daily Herald which was partly owned by the TUC and was, effectively, the official paper of the Labour Party. In the same year he won the Parliamentary seat of Plymouth Devonport as part of Clement Atlee's landslide victory, the first time Labour had ever held the seat. He continued working as a journalist with two spells as editor of Tribune, and became a fierce champion of left wing causes as well as a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Foot surprisingly lost his Devonport seat to Dame Joan Vickers in 1955 but returned to parliament in 1960 as Member for Ebbw Vale, the former seat of his great political mentor Aneurin Bevan. His opposition to defence spending led to the whip being withdrawn from him in 1961 and he was outside the Labour fold for two years. Although the whip was restored he refused to serve in Harold Wilson's first two administrations, as he opposed Labour's policies on Vietnam, pay restraint and the Common Market.

Michael Foot campaigning in Devonport in 1950 He also formed an unlikely alliance with the Conservative right winger Enoch Powell to oppose government plans to abolish the right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords. After defeat by Ted Heath's Conservatives in 1970 the Labour left strengthened its position in the party and in 1972 Foot stood, unsuccessfully, for the post of deputy leader. When Labour returned to power in 1974 Foot accepted the position of Employment Secretary and set about the task of strengthening links between the party and the trades unions. He also campaigned fiercely for a no vote in the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should remain part of the European Economic Community. When Harold Wilson stood down in 1976, Foot stood for the party leadership but was defeated by James Callaghan who appointed him as Leader of the House of Commons. By now Labour was becoming deeply unpopular and a series of by election defeats reduced the party's majority in the House of Commons. It fell to Foot to oversee the workings of the Lib Lab pact, whereby Labour was sustained in power only through the support of the Liberal Party under David Steel.

Foot's appearance at the Cenotaph caused controversy A period of industrial unrest, known as the winter of discontent, further undermined the Callaghan administration and Margaret Thatcher's victory swept Labour from power in 1979, condemning the party to 18 years in opposition. Callaghan resigned in 1980 and Labour MPs elected Foot as their leader in preference to the candidate of the right, Denis Healey, some said because they hoped for a quiet life. But the left was determined to avenge what it saw as the failings of the Callaghan years. There followed a huge campaign to change party rules, and replace former Callaghan supporters with left wing members who would oppose the Common Market, and support a policy of state ownership. Foot, who had stood as a compromise leader to unite the party was, by now 67, and too frail to give the strong leadership that was needed to bring the warring sides together. As the militants gained strength, moderate Labour members followed David Owen and the other members of the so called Gang of Four as they defected from the troubled party and formed the SDP.

Foot was heavily criticised by the left for supporting the Falklands campaign, which helped regain some of Mrs Thatcher's falling popularity ahead of the 1983 General Election. It was Foot's unwillingness to change his appearance, his clothes or his principles, that brought him a popularity rating of just 24%, the lowest since polling began. With his wife, Jill Craigie, at the 1983 General Election It would be 26 years before another Labour leader, in that case Gordon Brown, would be more unpopular with the British public. Most famously, he was accused of wearing a donkey jacket at the Cenotaph in London, during the 1981 Annual Service of Remembrance. Foot later protested that it was actually a perfectly respectable green jacket and claimed the Queen Mother had complimented him on his appearance. But, despite this royal endorsement, the tabloids' view of him as unpatriotic and badly-dressed struck a chord with many members of the public. Foot had insisted that Labour's manifesto for the 1983 General Election should be based on resolutions passed by the Party's annual conference. It contained commitments to unilateral nuclear disarmament, increased personal taxation and greater government interference in industry.

The document was famously described by the Labour MP Gerald Kaufman as the longest suicide note in history. The election consigned Labour to its biggest defeat since 1918, and Foot, at 70, was quick to resign the leadership, and was replaced by his protege, Neil Kinnock. Scholar and orator Foot stayed in the Commons till the 1992 election, retiring after 42 years as a Member of Parliament, and refusing to go to the House of Lords, where two of his brothers had already sat. In retirement, he saw his vision of politics surpassed by Tony Blair's New Labour. Out went the commitment to nationalisation, the famous Clause Four of the Labour manifesto, and in came a renewed belief in the power of the market. Despite his lack of political success, Michael Foot still retained the warm affection of colleagues. In private, he was gentle, kindly, even diffident, and his intellectual scholarship won him many admirers. He wrote nearly 20 books, not just on contemporaries like Bevan and Beaverbrook, but on his literary heroes like Swift and Hazlitt. As a writer, and as an orator, few could match him.

His rival Enoch Powell called him "the outstanding Parliamentarian of our time". Michael Foot facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Michael Foot COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. Michael Foot Michael Foot (born 1913) was a left-wing journalist, a British Labour Party member of Parliament, and leader of the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983. Michael Foot was born on July 23, 1913, in Plymouth, England. His father, Isaac Foot (1880-1960), was a major figure in the radical wing of the Liberal Party and represented Bodmin (Cornwall) in Parliament from 1922 to 1924 and again from 1929 to 1935. A passionate bibliophile, he built up a collection of more than 60,000 books—an enthusiasm which his son inherited. Foot was a physically active child despite recurring bouts of eczema and asthma. He attended Leighton Park, a public school founded by Quakers and marked by an internationalist and pacifist ethos.

In 1931 he entered Oxford and soon gravitated toward the debating society or Union, as it was called, becoming its president in 1933. He voted with the majority in the famous 1933 resolution that "this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country." Liberal Turns Labour Foot's first venture into national journalism was a 1934 article for the News Chronicle of London entitled "Why I Am a Liberal." He argued that Liberalism was a bulwark against war and fascism and called for a Rooseveltian New Deal for Britain. But he was not destined to remain a Liberal much longer. In 1934 he took a job in Liverpool, where he was appalled by the poverty and unemployment he saw around him. As a result he joined the Labour Party and met, for the first time, Aneurin Bevan, whose close friend, coworker, and biographer he was later to become. Foot fought his first parliamentary race in 1935, losing to a popular Conservative candidate at Monmouth. In 1937 he was adopted as the prospective Labour candidate for Plymouth Devenport. More immediately promising was the experience he was gaining in journalism.

After short stints with the New Statesman and Tribune, Bevan was instrumental in finding him a job on the newspapers owned by Lord Beaverbrook. He worked for Beaverbrook from 1938 to 1944, rising to the acting editorship of the London Evening Standard in 1942. Under his guidance the paper moved sharply to the left. The appearance of the book Guilty Men in 1940 made him notorious. Co-written by him under the pseudonym "Cato," Guilty Men was a slashing attack on the foreign and defense policies of the Conservative governments of the 1930s. A massive best-seller (by 1944 there were 43 printings), it became the leading anti-Tory critique of appeasement and stands as one of the great political tracts of 20th-century Britain and as a contributing factor to the Labour Party's victory in 1945. Victory Over Tories Foot won Plymouth Devenport in 1945, transforming a previous Tory majority of 11,000 into a Labour majority of 2,000.

A back beach "loyal critic" of the government, he was the co-author of the 1947 pamphlet "Keep Left," which warned of the need for more rigorous socialist policies. In 1948 he became editor of Tribune and steered the editorial line toward support of Britain's entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and support for the United States in the Korean War. During the 1950s Foot was a leading spokesperson for the left wing of the Labour Party. He attacked the 1951 Labour government's budget, which raised defense spending and imposed fees on drug prescriptions and eyeglasses. He opposed German rearmament, the British invasion of Suez in 1956, and the Labour leadership's defense policy, which conditionally tolerated British first use of nuclear weapons. These controversial stands helped cause his defeat in the elections of 1955 and 1959. Foot was flabbergasted when in 1957 his political hero Aneurin Bevan abruptly announced that Britain must maintain its nuclear deterrent so as not to "appear naked in the conference chamber" in negotiations with the Soviet Union.

However, friendly relations between the two men were re-established by 1959. On Bevan's death in 1960 Foot was selected as his successor for the South Wales coalmining constituency of Ebbw Vale. He won election by over 16,000 votes and still held the seat in 1985. Foot welcomed the emergence of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour Party in 1963 and gave critical support to the 1964-1970 Labour government from the back benches. As he saw it, the greatest need was to keep the Tories out, even though he viewed the government's record as a "bloody catastrophe." In 1969 he ran unsuccessfully against James Callaghan for the post of Labour Party treasurer. Becomes Employment Secretary In 1970 Foot substantially modified his political stance. Previously a back bench critic of the Labour leadership, he now sought and won election to the shadow cabinet. In 1972 Wilson promoted him to shadow leader of the House of Commons, and after Labour's victory in the 1974 general election he accepted the cabinet post of employment secretary.

Foot was a powerful figure in the 1974-1979 Labour government. As employment secretary he was responsible for the repeal of the Conservative Industrial Relations Act of 1972. As leader of the House of Commons from 1976 to 1979 he used his encyclopedic knowledge of parliamentary procedure to guide legislation through a House of Commons in which the government did not command a majority. His goal throughout was to keep Labour in office for as long as possible, and he accordingly advised Callaghan, to whom he had become increasingly close, not to hold a general election in the fall of 1978. But not even Foot's parliamentary skills could save the government from losing a vote of confidence in March 1979, and in the ensuing election Labour suffered a stunning defeat. Following Callaghan's resignation as party leader, Foot won a bitterly-fought contest against Denis Healy in November 1980.

Foot's election, along with sweeping constitutional changes in the party's method of electing the leader and reselecting members of Parliament, led the far right of the party to split from Labour to form the Social Democratic Party (S.D.P.) early in 1981. Defeat for Labour Foot led a deeply divided and demoralized party into the general election of 1983. The result was an utter debacle for Labour, which only narrowly edged out the S.D.P. for second place with 27.6 percent of the votes. It was Labour's worst showing since the 1920s. On June 13, 1983, Foot resigned as party leader. Ten years later, looking back over Foot's career on the occasion of his 80th birthday in July 1993, journalist Ian Aitken, writing in New Statesman & Society, lamented what he called a betrayal of Foot. "His leadership had been held—often by people who ought to know better—to be the cause of the disasters that engulfed the Labour Party in the early years of Thatcherism, culminating in the election loss of 1983.

Yet this is nonsense, and cruel nonsense at that. What doomed Foot's leadership … was, quite simply, betrayal—and betrayal by the very people he could have expected to support him as the most left-wing, democratically minded leader they have ever had, or were ever likely to have." Soviet Ties Alleged Foot was attacked in an early 1995 Sunday Times article that claimed he had taken money from the Soviet secret police in the 1960s to subsidize a weekly newspaper he helped to found in 1937. The story also appeared in The News of the World. Both papers were owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. The stories caused a turmoil on London's Fleet Street, and Foot sued Murdoch and the papers for libel. The News printed an apology, but the Times edited Foot's response to the story. Not surprisingly, Foot had strong feelings about Murdoch, which he revealed during an interview with Bill Jones, writing for New Statesman.

"It is impossible to overrate the injurious effect he's (Murdoch) had, and it's sad the other papers are inclined to follow his lead rather than restore any decent standards in British journalism, though I exclude some from this—the Guardian and Observer and some sincere journalists on other papers." In the same interview, Foot blamed England's Tory government for corruption he sees as pervasive in English government. "Most people outside the House (of Commons) now see it as a corrupt place and they're right—it is corrupt from top to bottom. I exonerate Labour from these charges. Yet the way money is distributed in the Commons, and the (House of) Lords too, let's not forget, is an absolute outrage." As reported by the journalism of the day, Foot was viewed as largely ineffectual in his later years. Reviewer Steven Fielding, writing in the January 1996 issue of History Today on a biography of Foot by Mervyn Jones, noted the "very low-ebb" of Foot's reputation. "Few, even in the party he led during the early 1980s, would now publicly endorse any of his core beliefs.

Foot is as Old Labor as you could possibly get." Further Reading Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (London, 1981), is accurate and on the whole sympathetic. A bruising account of his role in Labour's 1983 defeat is offered in David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1983 (London, 1984). The best approach, however, is through Foot's own writings. In addition to Guilty Men (London, 1940), the most important are The Pen and the Sword (London, 1957), Aneurin Bevan, 1897-1945 (London, 1962), Aneurin Bevan, 1945-1960 (London, 1973), and Debts of Honour (London, 1981). His side of the election of 1983 is presented in Another Heart and Other Pulses: the Alternative to the Thatcher Society (London, 1984).

Jones, Bill, "Interview: Michael Foot," New Statesman, January 10, 1997, v126, n4316, p. 30. Aitken, Ian, "The Left's Betrayal of Michael Foot," New Statesman & Society, July 30, 1993, v6, n263, p. 9. □ Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA The Oxford Companion to British History © The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. Foot, Michael (b. 1913). Deputy leader (1976–80) and leader (1980–3) of the Labour Party . A distinguished left-wing author and journalist, Foot, as editor and managing director of Tribune, was a leading Bevanite in the 1950s and after 1958 prominent in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament . An MP from 1945, he accepted office for the first time as employment secretary 1974–6.

Between 1976 and 1979 he was lord president of the council and leader of the House of Commons, before succeeding James Callaghan as party leader. He led a divided party however, and went down to humiliating defeat at the hands of Mrs Thatcher in 1983 on a manifesto described as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. Foot, co-author of a famous polemic (Guilty Men, 1940), biographer of Nye Bevan, littérateur, brilliant orator, and devotee of the House of Commons, was a much admired and respected figure both inside and outside the Labour movement. Andrew Sanders The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press Michael Foot, 1913–2010, British politician. He joined the Labour party in the 1930s, entered Parliament in 1945, and served there until 1992. An superb debater and orator, he became an eloquent spokesperson for Labour's radical left wing.

Editor of the party organ, the Tribune, Foot served as secretary of state for employment (1974–75) and as leader of the House of Commons (1976–79). He was also a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He succeeded James Callaghan as Labour party leader (1980–83). Foot was unsuccessful in his attempt to maintain the party's traditional policies in the face of opposition from more conservative members, who broke away and formed (1981) the centrist Social Democratic party , and in 1983 he led the Labour party to one of its worst electoral defeats. He wrote a number of books, notably biographies of Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson, H. G. Wells, and Lord Byron. Cite this article

Question: He was born in 1913 and was Labour Party Leader from: 1980 - 1983. Who was he?
Answer: Michael Foot